Microsoft has filed a patent for a new type of mixed-reality head-mounted display (HMD) called a Persistence of Vision Augmented Reality Display. The display uses movable screens to simulate a 360 degree field of view. These screens can rotate back and forth, spin around a user's head, or spin in front of the user's eyes. The device isn't guaranteed to ever see the light of day, but hopefully some of the ideas make it into other products.

Microsoft's patent FIG. 4A below illustrates a movement based display device with a movable member configured to rotate about a user's head; FIG. 4B illustrates a movement based display device with a movable member configured to reciprocate in front of user's eyes; FIG. 4C illustrates a movement based display device with movable members configured to spin in front of the user's eyes

What Happens When You Water Cool an Air Cooler&#63;

What happens when you try to water cool and air cooling tower? One YouTuber decided decided to find out, as he sealed the upper part of a Hyper 212 EVO inside a closed ice loop. The setup managed to keep and overclocked 2500k at a stable 44C under load, but just how practical such a setup would be long-term remains to be seen. Check out the experiment below:

Ever since I can remember, when it comes to CPU cooling there are two main options, water cooling or air cooling. That got me thinking, why cant you do both. I took my Hyper 212 EVO and set out to water cool it, I thought it would be cool But I had not idea it would work this well.

Get Ready for Targeted Ads on Your Smart TV

Disney, Comcast, NBCUniversal, and other top media companies have teamed up with VIZIO for a new standard that will bring targeted ads to television viewers. VIZIO, which recently lost $2.2 million after being caught tracking and selling viewing data using software on its Smart TVs, claims targeted ads, which are "relevant" to the household, will "drastically enhance" the viewing experience.

The companies are calling themselves a consortium, and they've dubbed this "Project OAR," or Open Addressable Ready. Once developed, the new, open standard will make it possible for all connected TV companies to sell targeted ads in scheduled and on-demand programs. While this will theoretically make ads more successful and therefore more valuable, it also means viewers' data will be shared with third parties. That raises the usual data privacy concerns.

In other words, Valve doesn't think the Epic Store client should be touching localconfig.vdf at all, and presumably would prefer it if Epic used the Steam API to gather friends lists. For Epic's part, it has not said that the entire file is uploaded, only that it parses out user IDs and uploads hashes of them, should users import Steam friends. In the future, Valve could potentially encrypt local user data to prevent the Epic client and other software from copying it.

PlayerUnknown Leaves PUBG Development Team

On Twitter, Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene announced that he's leaving the the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds development team to head up a new division of PUBG corp called "PUBG Special Projects." While he will still be a "creative consultant" for PubG's development, Brendan Green says he's moving to Amsterdam to focus on research and game development. Just what the new division will work on isn't clear, but he says they're tasked with "exploring, experimenting, and creating new technologies, tools, pipelines, and gameplay..."

But for me, it's more than just that. Together with a team of game developers and researchers, we will explore the possibilities of interaction and connection within the game space.

Alphabet Launches Chrome Extension That Filters Comments With AI

Following up on the "Perspective" hate speech filtering experiment from 2017, one Alphabet's subsidiaries, Jigsaw, recently released a machine learning-powered Chrome extension designed to filter out "toxic" comments on high traffic sites. Out of curiosity, I downloaded the extension on a fresh Chrome install, and found that it features a virtual nob that lets users tune the "volume" of the comments sections in YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Disqus comment sections. Twisting the knob gradually filters out more and more comments in real time. As the developers note, it definitely misses some nasty comments while hiding other comments that aren't particularly "toxic" at all, but based on my quick test with some controversial YouTube videos, the sheer variety of language it can seemingly interpret is remarkable.

The machine learning powering Tune is experimental. It still misses some toxic comments and incorrectly hides some non-toxic comments. We're constantly working to improve the underlying technology, and users can easily give feedback right in the tool to help us improve our algorithms. Tune isn't meant to be a solution for direct targets of harassment (for whom seeing direct threats can be vital for their safety), nor is Tune a solution for all toxicity. Rather, it's an experiment to show people how machine learning technology can create new ways to empower people as they read discussions online.

Classic World of Warcraft Content Progression Revealed

For many of us, World of Warcraft (WoW) was the first MMO that appealed to us. As the MMO aged, the classic content was ignored or altered to make it easier to attract new players to the game. After years of complaints, Blizzard Entertainment is bringing back Classic World of Warcraft and Community Manager Kaivax has detailed the 6 phase content patch release schedule. For example, progression in the MMO is based on newer raids superseding older content because more powerful items drop in the new raid. In the post, Blizzard details which raids will be available at the start of Classic WoW.

Currently, based on both your feedback and our own deliberations, we're now planning to increase it to six phases. Our focus is still primarily on player power-progression, but we're also aiming to capture what it felt like to play in a realm community in original WoW. To do that, we're planning to mirror the approach taken by original WoW, with patches paired together. We haven't yet determined exactly when phases 2-6 will occur, and PvP content is notably missing from the list above. That's because we're still evaluating our options regarding PvP rewards, as they also changed over time (both in power and in terms of which PvP reward items were available).

A comparison of the GFXBench scores of the AMD 66AF:F1 with the Radeon RX Vega 64 shows that the purported Navi variant leads significantly in the Aztec Ruins Normal Tier (1080p) and High Tier tests 1440p). This could imply that GCN6 in Navi is tailored more towards raw graphics than compute. We aren't exactly sure about the specs of this particular entry but expect to see variants with anywhere between 20 to 40 higher clocked CUs when Navi launches.

Videos containing misinformation can still appear in the search results, but YouTube will generate these disclaimers when a query involves sensitive topics, with the intent to inform viewers as the company deals with the spread of misinformation on the platform. The feature is currently available to a limited number of users in India, one of YouTube’s largest markets with nearly 250 million users, for search queries in English and Hindi. The company said it will eventually expand it to users across the world, but declined to say when.

The patent indicates that the controller provides for a "seamless activation of a game of other application on a host device" and that a "game may be launched on the host device in a response to an activation signal that is dispatched from the game controller." The game controller itself has a built-in notification system that can notify a player of various game-related responses (i.e. chat notification, leaderboard changes, etc.).

NVIDIA used more than a million sample points collected via anonymous GeForce Experience data, and then analyzed the data (which means no AMD cards). Specifically, NVIDIA is looking at player performance in two popular battle royale games: PUBG and Fortnite. How do you quantify player performance? NVIDIA looked at kill/death ratio and matched that up with number of hours played per week, then finally broke that down into graphics hardware and monitor refresh rate. NVIDIA limited its analysis to 1080p, which provides for the highest refresh rates and also serves to normalize things a bit.